BEHAVIOR CHANGE
lessons from Thin Within
This is a great self-help formula for behavior modification.
It is not simply a fat book.
If we could think ourselves fat, we could also think ourselves
thin.
Sign a pledge as a symbol of commitment to yourself.
Keys to mastery: Eat only when hungry. Reduce the number of distractions to eat in
a calm environment. Eat
only when sitting. Eat
only when relaxed. Eat only what my body loves. Pat attention only to my food while eating.
Eat slowly, savoring every bite.
Stop before my body is full.
Success tools: Observations
and Corrections. (Record
progress with each of the keys....)
Observations....looking in the mirror, recording what is seen.
Begin a process of communication between your mind
and your body....
Make concrete, measurable goals. ("I am going to weigh #lbs. by Day 30.")
Progress, not perfection.
"It took me a long time to figure out that I
was my own worst enemy.
Finally I realized that I alone was responsible for
the committee in my head that was constantly criticizing
me, and that I alone could determine whether my life would
be a success or failure."
Tale a few deep breaths and imagine that you're watching yourself
on a television screen.
Log activity.
Where did the habit come from?
Metaphor: turning off the fat machinery.
Make beliefs explicit.
Analyze significant times in life. (pp79ff) Fell in love, married,
new job, etc.
Treats for self.
"Will I love myself more if I eat this?"
Live in the present. He
cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature
in the present, above time.
(Emerson)
Refocus on goals. Dreams.
Hunger graph. Food
log.
Empowerment. Belief
--> Actions --> Results
Forgiveness. Affirmations.
Visualizations.
Daily Acknowledgements.
The main focus of thin within is to create a balance
among the spiritual, mental, and physical aspects of ourselves....
I am a thin person; I am a thin person; I am a thin person....
Four steps to support and help you in your quest for more satisifaction
in your life:
Be responsible. When you make an agreement with yourself to
complete something, do it.
Work as hard for yourself as you do for others.
Make choices that serve you. Ask yourself if this
is what you really want.
What does your heart want?
Be unreasonable. Follow your heart. Affirm: I deserve to be who and what I really am.
Get results. Set goals and achieve them.
Dream up creative solutions.
From Shyness: Write yourself a letter now and get into the habit of doing
so whenever you feel the need to express some strong sentiments
or to clarify some ambiguous reactions.
David Hackworth says AIT spent 5 hours (out of 700) on boobytraps
and mines. But 50%
of casualties came from them.
No training films, no simulation.
The careerists didn't care about the soldiers.
from Information Anxiety
"Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health,
so study without a liking for it spoils the memory, and
it retains nothing it takes in."
--da Vinci
Most things are easy to learn but hard to master.
People remember 90 percent of what they do, 75 percent of what
they say, and 10 percent of what they hear.
A good facilitator tries to organize and make easily available
the widest possible range of resources for learning. -- Carl Rogers
Education is to learning as tour groups are to adventure. (cf. sex
education vs sex training)
"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he
already knows." --Epictetus
"Who learns by finding out has sevenfold the skill of
he who learned by being told."
-- Arthur Guiterman
...reading the daily newspaper is the least cost-efficient
thing you can do.
four walls of defense: selective exposure, selective attention,
selection perception, selective retention
Every time you come across a new idea, find a connection.....
"What you know counts a whole lot less than what you can
learn." --
Donald Kennedy, president of Stanford to class of '86
by W. Timothy Gallwey
self 1 = I = teller
self 2 = myself = doer
Getting it together mentally in tennis involves the learning
of several internal skills:
All these skills are subsidiary to the master skill, without
which nothing of value is ever achieved: the art of concentration.
Focus on the seams. The
mind is so absorbed in watching the pattern that it forgets
to try so hard.
After I developed by practice some small ability to concentrate
my mind, I discovered that concentration was not only a
means to an end, but something of tremendous value in itself. As a result, instead of using concentration to help my tennis, I
now use tennis as a means to further increase concentration.
When one concentrates on the court, he focuses his awareness
in two dimensions, the here and the now--that is, in space
and in time. The seams focus awareness more exactly in space
than merely the ball itself does.
There are 1000 milliseconds in every second; alertness
is a measure of how many nows you are aware of in a given
period. The most direct means of increasing one's ability to concentrate
is through meditation.
The second my mind starts wondering about whether I'm going
to win or los the match, I bring it back to my breath and
relax in its natural and basic motion.
Here and now are the only place and time when one every enjoys
himself or accomplishes anything.
Most of our suffering takes place when we allow our
minds to imagine the future or mull over the past.
Tennis was not the only game I was playing on the court.
"Abandon" is a good word to describe what happens
to a tennis player who feels he has nothing to lose. He stops caring about the outcome and plays all out. This is the true meaning of detachment. It is effortless effort. It happens when one lets go of attachment to
the results of one's actions and allows the increased energy
to come to bear on the action itself.
It is our state of consciousness that is the determining factor
in our appreciation of the beautiful, the true or the loving.
In a conversation between a wise man and a fool, who learns
most? (The wise
man. The fool is a fool because he doesn't know
how to learn from his experience.)
Teaching is like dropping letters into the mailbox of the mind.
You know when they're posted but not when delivered,
if read, or action taken.
--HBS Prof Christensen
"The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift
to the individual the burden of pursuing his own education." -- John Gardner
"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening
the natural curiosity of young minds."
--Anatole France
"All that is good in man lies in youthful feeling and
mature thought." --Joseph
Joubert
"It is the studying that you do after your school days
that really counts. Otherwise,
you know only that which everyone else knows."
Henry L. Doherty
"You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him
think." --Elbert Hubbard
American IQ tests, in which a student's total ability is estimated
from his success or failure in answering a long series of
distinct and specific questions, is an example of our failure
to understand the power of concentration or to respect the
patience, humility and grandness of vision it requires.
--Robt Grudin
The process of learning is itself innately pleasurable and
this true pleasure is likely to be hidden or distempered
if we present it with the dishonesty of a publicist. --Grudin
The state of modern higher education resembles that of an oak
tree in a drought. Most oaks will survive one dry season,
but not two in a row. Higher education is now entering its
second season of drought: a generation in which the untaught
will be taught by the untaught. --Grudin
First we form our habits; then they form us.
Human reactions to change:
Internet
Time Group